


ouroboros

by bugcore



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, NO descriptions of genitalia because has that ever been a smooth read for anyone honestly, actually i think there is one (1) mention of clit, nearly had this finished but had to rewrite after that FUCKING finale, no beta we post like mne, not dubcon or hate sex, theyre just both assigned bastard at birth, theyre morons and they need each other and thats it, unfortunately they are in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23062201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugcore/pseuds/bugcore
Summary: Here they are again. The snake, beholden to the laws of the universe, eats itself.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 116





	ouroboros

closer than I thought we'd end up anyway  
never cared, you left in fear, too hard to stay  
control all my wavelengths till I find a better guy  
I don't know how you do it to me, time after time

I can read you clearly like a magazine  
pictures of your past are visible to me

text my phone I don't reply, ignore your calls  
if I was interested I'd make that clear, not anymore  
you really think that I'm the one to fall for all those lies  
stupid, just to think, you were a waste of time

* * *

She walks into the TARDIS, her TARDIS. Home - really, truly, home. Takes a deep breath, thinks about the feel of the controls humming under her fingertips as she braces herself against the console. She’s acting without thinking about it, nauseous and overloaded.

But the TARDIS is (always) cleverer than she realises; she’s vaguely aware that switches are flipping, dials turning, buttons pressing without her input. Her knuckles are a stark white, vicelike grip on a metallic lever.

She could wait, she knows – she could wait forever – but the adrenaline is coursing through her like something molten, twisting and alive, and so the quasi-urgency of the moment grows and grows and grows and grows and –

– and then. He’s standing there, in front of her. Plucked from a micro-instant like an errant feather.

He’s smiling beatifically, serenely poised, hands trembling, hoping – she realises abruptly – to die. She could _almost_ feel sorry for denying him the blissful escape, but she’s selfish (always been selfish, really) and so instead she feels a grim and familiar delight.

It takes him a minute to realise what’s going on, that he’s still shaking and breathing; hands still poised to work the mortal coil.

The Master drags his eyelids open.

The Doctor can see the second he works out what’s happened, the spasm of rage that snakes its way through him: hands flexing, shoulders twitching, jaw grinding, and finally, his head snaps up and two cold, manic eyes greet hers. She smiles, glad and furious and vindictive.

He lets a breath, held, rush from between clenched teeth, crumples to his knees like a piece of failed origami. His eyes haven’t left her face.

It’s silent for a bit. Time seems to have warped. _It often does_ , supplies her brain helpfully, from in the midst of rearranging neurons.

She waits.

The Master, always the first to crack, ruins the quiet. Balling up his hands with a snarl, he slams his fists onto the floor.

She flinches at the noise, but she’s not scared. Watches him (curiously) as a tear drips from one red-ringed, bloodshot eye.

This time he’s almost been feral, drunk on the vindictive delight of his machinations, but now he (victim of the cruellest foil) sits unhinged before her.

“Why!” he yells, ragged. Another slam of his fists. The impact vibrates the soles of her boots, and the Doctor feels her toes wriggle inside them.

She smiles coldly. Rhetorical, but she’ll answer him anyhow.

“I win,” she replies, not sarcastically enough, the satisfaction foreign and unexpected on her tongue.

He blinks slowly, swallows, sighs, sways slightly. There’s some spittle caught in his not-quite-beard.

“Yes,” he replies, defeatedly, a jarring moment of lucidity before he’s lost again.

The Doctor opens and closes her mouth, starting as if to say several sentences at once. Hundreds of thoughts are jostling for attention, brain now coming back online, but she can’t make sense of it all.

The Master sighs again and hoists himself to his feet, cracking his neck from side to side in resignation.

He swallows, bites the inside of his lip – calculating his next move, she supposes, weighing up his options.

She feels him reaching out, tapping against the glass. “Don’t,” she says, out loud, denying the Contact. To her surprise, he listens.

Maybe they’re both scared of what’s behind it, now.

A beat.

He shrugs. A slow blink. Puts his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels. He’s not calm, though, a vein jumping in his throat, teeth grit under all that stubble.

Suddenly the Doctor doesn’t want to talk about it. Any of it. Violently so.

She’s more than sorry, and he’s never angry enough. She knows she’s just as bad, and he knows he’s just as good. And guilt is guilt, after all, even if it’s glee in the beginning.

So, she steps forward, into his space. Crowds her chest against his. Testing the waters of her new-found boldness.

She can sense him coiled, skin humming. He glowers down at her, all caged animal.

_To hell with it_ , she thinks, and _yes,_ _it’s been quite a day_ , her brain reassures her. Never one to falter in the pursuit of her convictions, she kisses him, hands reaching of their own accord for the nape of his neck, fingers skimming his hairline.

This takes him by surprise, evidently – but to be fair, it takes most of _her_ by surprise.

He almost falters backwards but catches himself and leans into the kiss. Into her, (into them?).

The terms of this are mutually understood. They’ll probably find a way to talk about it later.

They’re both sweaty, coated in dust and dirt and ash; and there’s the salt of his tear, which stings against a cut in her lip and buzzes sharp against her tastebuds. His lips are softer this time. Hard-set, plushness offset by the not-quite-tickle of his not-quite-beard. The Doctor spends a brief moment chasing clamouring tangents – _did her stubble feel like this/no, she didn’t have stubble this time/had kissing felt like Velcro for everyone else/could she_ get _stubble?_ – before she rejoins the present moment as a hand seizes her waist, fists in the fabric of her shirt, squeezes at her flesh. _Desperate_ , she thinks. She feels it too, toying with the collar of his ridiculous coat, wool scratchy under her fingers.

She understands _this_. They’re feeling beings at the hearts of it all.

There’s a pause. His eyes are darting over her face, calculating, and it annoys her, so she takes his face firmly in her hands and pulls him in again. He trembles, minutely, eyelashes brushing her face.

She wants so desperately not to have to talk about it just now, needs for him to understand this, to be _kind_ , pleads for clemency with her lips against his. The Master grants this small mercy, joyfully, grip tightening on her waist, grappling for osculatory control.

A part of her is filled with a pulsating warmth, fizzling pleasantly, and _Oh_ , she thinks. _Desire_. Objectively, she’s interested to see how it all plays out in this body.

Still caught up in the kissing, she bites his tongue, just to see what he’ll do – yelp, as it turns out – and in retaliation he catches her lip between his teeth, sharp and swift, flicking out his tongue to taste dull metallic blood.

The pain is bright and welcome. She holds a hand to her mouth. When it comes back with red fingertips, she licks her lips, chasing the familiar tang.

He’s kissing along her jaw now, tracking her pulse, right down to her collarbone.

She moans at the feeling of it, the noise wispy and foreign in her mouth. The Master laughs, and it’s a brief bark of noise against her neck.

She knows this is going the same place it often does, and she’s content to revel in the journey, graciously allowing him the throttler. She holds him close as he nips at her skin, hands tracing his shoulder blades, buried under layers as they are.

Eventually (when he tires of the petting), she feels herself being walked backwards until her tailbone hits console. She grunts, the hand still anchored to his neck instinctively digging in. He’s taller than her, this time. Bigger. It thrills her, in a sick kind of way, knowing that he could ( _if_ so possessed) use that against her. That he would ( _when_ so possessed) use that against her. It’s a heady rush, to run the knife’s blade against your own carotid.

His fingers hesitate for a millionth of a second (calculated, just enough so that she’ll notice) before grasping at her waist once more, and it’s clearer than ever, that the struggle between them has always has been _such_ an act. He’s practically manning the box office.

She feels him unsnapping her suspenders and dancing his hands under the hem of her shirt, not asking for permission. She tugs at his overcoat until it falls to the floor at their feet, runs her hands up and down his arms, bites his jaw, face still pressed into his neck. He startles.

She feels him hoist her onto the console, flippantly, takes a moment to revel in the feeling of his muscles beneath her hands, rippling under burning skin. The Doctor settles back, at home against rows of buttons and knobs, pushing a lever aside. It might be the handbrake. She’s not particularly concerned with it at the current moment.

Their kisses aren’t particularly tender, but that’s just part of it at this point. She’s chasing them anyhow, reaching for more when they break apart, breathing heavily, eyes darting across each other’s faces. She can feel a sweat sticking down errant strands of hair to her face.

He grunts, pressing their bodies flush, and he’s burning up even through the clothes between them, and she’s drinking it in, delighting in the unexpected softness of his hair, the noises she can wring from the back of his throat if she pulls just _so_. Now he’s kissing her again, hands pressed either side of her head, tendons in his wrists taut and steady. You’d never think someone could make such bodily use of an inch of height, but she feels completely, comfortably pinned. The delight disgusts her, but she still moans when he bites her neck. A reminder he’s playing nice. It hurts, sharp, and she digs her fingernails into his jaw as hard as she can, grinning as he makes a noise like an alley cat, panting into her ear.

“What do you want?” he says, and she almost feels flattered that he’s asking.

“You,” she says, falteringly, sucking in breaths, “Inside.”

It would be grotesque if it weren’t the truth, she thinks offhandledly, watching his gaze turn hungry and pointed. The irony of the request isn’t lost on either of them. She finds a savage kind of joy in wielding it so brazenly.

“How?”

His voice is hoarse.

“How _ever_.” she says, shifting her weight onto her elbows, canting her hips towards him.

The Master dips his head, exhales a puff of breath against her neck, fighting whatever it is that’s threshing around inside him. She waits, barely patient, breathing evenly through her nose.

Eventually, finally, blessedly, he moves a hand to her waist, rests his weight against his other forearm, pressed next to her ear. He slips teasing fingers beneath the waistband of her trousers, and she sighs, pinching the cartilage of his ear absentmindedly. He leans in to it (eyes slipping shut) as though it were the gentlest caress, and a sickeningly horrible tenderness rears up inside her chest, beating meaty fists against her ribcage.

It’s a fairly awkward angle at which to undo her trousers, but vexed minds make short work of vexing problems, and soon enough, she feels air against her legs. She’s not bothered with pants, and this seems to have caught the Master off-guard, because he’s suddenly wearing a yearning grin that that suits him (supremely sectionable candidate that he is), hand resting on the jut of her pelvis. She’d never describe his gaze as _soft_ , but as knife-set-aside, at least momentarily.

The grin is vaguely familiar, even as the sensation of him working a finger inside – surprisingly gentle – isn’t. Or, she corrects, isn’t to herself, isn’t to the Doctor-capital-d. The renegade and timeless Child (currently occupied with banging pans together in a corner of her mind) might have different recollections. Regardless of who’s feeling the familiarity, or not, it feels almost…right, in a way. Maybe.

Probably.

It definitely feels _good_.

She’s getting caught up, again, and she focuses back on the physicality of it all, the burning weight of the Master pressed against her torso as he feels around, slips in another digit, works his fingers against her. Yes, it’s not bad at _all_ , she realises, wondrous that it does, somehow, feel _electric_. She can feel sweat on the backs of her knees.

The Doctor hears a wet kind of noise and, eventually, it registers that it’s her. She wrinkles her face up, not disgusted but bemused, moans slightly. The Master swivels his head to look at her, and when meets her gaze, he looks voracious, which is flattering.

“Suits you,” he says conversationally, as though they weren’t _decidedly_ not-talking-about-It, whatever It encompassed at this point of the proceedings.

“What does?” she replies, suitably distracted.

“This,” he says. “Cunt.”

He grins, and she can feel him wiggle his fingers, inside her, and – isn’t _that_ an entirely new sensation to be unpacked? – her breath catches in her throat.

Instead of rising to the bait, she frowns, arches her back (involuntarily), props herself up on her elbows (obligingly). “Get on with it, then.”

Mock-bored, as though every fibrous nerve-ending isn’t screaming for attention.

He raises an eyebrow, teasingly - mocking her bravado – and adds another finger.

And, oh, she wants to kiss him, all of a sudden, gaspingly, completely, overwhelmingly so, but settles for lying back again, carding shaking hands through his hair, moaning and huffing, eyes screwed shut.

He’s still, predictably and infuriatingly, good at this. Catalogues the litany of noises and shivers and shakes, working her like some familiar console, until she has the slightly unnerving sense of hurtling, both frighteningly fast and frustratingly slow at once, towards some kind of precipice.

And suddenly, without much bodily preamble at all, she’s coming. It feels like being punched, and kissed, and smothered, and doused in boiling water, all at once. In an impossible, blissful moment, like the split infinitive, she sees bursts of light behind her eyelids. Then it’s just a kind of warm, deep humming, muted sensation, a gentle pleasant glow. She exhales a breath she doesn’t remember holding.

 _Worth the hype,_ a voice in her mind says through the mist. She realises it’s hers. Sounds far off, though. _Makes sense what River was always yelling for._

When she opens her eyes blankly, the Master is hovering in her periphery, ominous, and she gazes down at him in the middle of her plummet back to reality. He’s grinning like a carnivorous Cheshire cat, Scout’s honour to the knuckles, thumb poised above her clit, still and calm and deciding what to do next.

She swallows – it feels like dust – and cups his chin in one of her hands, still jarred by the answering scrape of his stubble.

She can feel him wanting, practically vibrating with need, pressed against her leg, and she shifts herself slightly, testing the waters. The moan that slips from his lips unbidden is _loud_ , and sticky like molasses, and she can see sweat beading along his hairline, his upper lip, feels it beneath her fingertips.

 _What is it they say on Earth – it takes two to tarantella?_ She makes a mental note to ask Yaz later (- _and isn’t that a regular Doctor thought to have_ , she notes pleasedly; _things must be settling down up there_ ).

She shifts up, drawing him close, and presses her face into the crook of his neck. His fingers are still inside her, which feels odd. His pulse is jumping, one-two/three-four, a demented salsa, one-two/three-four, and she finds herself licking a stripe from collarbone to earlobe, and experimentally, bites the skin she meets there as hard as she can.

He yelps, shudders.

She tastes blood, bites her lip, gratified.

He’s stilled – and, she realises, almost gleefully, that he’s come, practically untouched. She graciously allows him to slump forward and bury his forehead into her sweaty t-shirt, heartbeats palpable in the heavy air, one-two/three-four one-two/three-four.

The moment eventually passes as moments are wont to do, and he straightens up, meeting her gaze. His eyes are striking this time – a curiously warm richness in some lights, molten manic in others. Right now they’re fish skittering below a frozen surface, pyroclastic flows.

She strokes his cheek with the blunt smoothness of her nail beds. It is a game, after all. He’s due to make the next move, full but never satiated as he feasts on stolen minutes.

As if he can hear her – _can he?_ She feels around, just in case, but no, she’s still alone up here – he lifts his hand to his mouth, licks his fingers clean, eyes boring into hers. It’s not a challenge but she watches him anyway, mouth slightly agape, long full breaths pushing through her nose, and enjoys feeling dizzy from the rush.

She trips over when she manages to stand up, of course, forgetting the jumble of trouser legs around her knees, boots still very much _on_ , and he catches her like an errant frisbee. At least he’s softer to land on, this time around.

She thinks in a moment of insanity, maybe she’s hurt him, but (eyes flashing) he rolls her onto her back, climbs on to her with purpose. Now they’re back on familiar territory. This is the part where they jostle, getting a feel for how they fit together this time, kissing, biting, nipping, in equal measure, and in the Master’s case, adding another large, angry looking bruise to the ones along her neck.

It’s almost jovial until it isn’t. She reaches to undo some of his (frankly, absurdly theatrical) vest buttons and he grabs her wrist, lightning fast and unyielding when she tries to retract the errant gesture. He’s shaking.

“Don’t,” and he doesn’t need to say it, but he does anyhow.

She manages to twist her hand around and pinch his wrist, hard. He howls, releases her arm (she can see the bruises forming already). For a split second she thinks he might try to slap her, but the fury passes and he laughs like a drain, baring his teeth.

He’s playing dirty now, knees locked either side of her hips, pressing the full weight of his frame against hers, and she grunts, not scared but annoyed at being pinned. Their foreheads meet with a sharp thud when she sits up to kiss him abruptly. He grunts.

The Master puts his hands under her shirt, then, and rucks it up to kiss her chest, pushing her back to lying down. Finds a nipple, bites down on it. She yelps, but it doesn’t hurt, not really. A wave of dizzying arousal sweeps down her limbs and she swallows thickly, suddenly short of breath.

He doesn’t seem interested in getting off again, pressing wet kisses to her torso, tracking steadily to her hips. This suits her just fine.

She’s managed to kick a leg out of one trouser leg, boots be damned, and she wriggles her legs impatiently. He’s less gentle now, bites her inner thigh softer than he could do, angles her hips towards him with no uncertain accuracy. Presses his fingers into her skin where they’re holding her waist, holding her close, nail crescents biting. She sighs, watching as he lowers his mouth to her, and lets her head fall back against the grille of the floor, hips rolling. Gooseflesh prickles down her spine, radiating down her limbs pleasantly.

After a while, when the initial rush of sensation settles into an agreeable rhythm, she chances a look down at him again.

He meets her gaze momentarily and it’s some kind of reverence, his mouth working against her, giving homily. The moment must have been teetering on the uncomfortable edge of tender, because he bites her, actually _bites_ her, and the pain is better than good, it’s perfect, it’s indescribable, actually. It’s all she can do to whimper, pathetically needy, and she can feel him – the absolute bastard – chuckle, still pressed against her. He doesn’t do it again, deliberately withholding, shepherding her towards the summit.

She’s frankly a little stunned, when it _still_ hits her like a mallet, takes her offline for just that blissful second of white noise, hot and searing. She’s breathless, fingers twisted around gaps in the metal floor, clinging desperately to something real and neutral as her body floats, far away. That luminescent haze descends on her again, like someone’s jumped up the contrast. The Doctor shuts her eyes tightly, demanding a moment of peace. When she opens them again the world is just as it often is, standard hues; the Master licks the bowl almost conversationally, laughing at the twitches of her hips and the jump of her legs, settles his face into the warm skin of her belly.

He could be praying, breath ghosting over her, supplicated. And she could sob. She almost does, but bites back tears, threads her hands through his hair, curling dark locks around her fingers as they both breathe through the barely repressed emotion of it all.

Eventually he sits back onto his legs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The Doctor props herself up, and he leans in to kiss her. She hangs back, just for a moment, caves, caresses his neck because she wants to. Because she can. It’s tender (almost), at odds with the frenzied glint in his eyes as he pulls back.

He watches her tuck her shirt back into her trousers, straighten a sock that’s beginning to slip into her boot. She picks up his coat while she’s crouched down, straightens up and hands it to him wordlessly. The Master makes sure to brush his hand against hers as he takes it back, flaps the heavy material around as he fumbles to find the scye. She watches the performance, combing her hair down with her fingers.

Arms appropriately seated, he stills, gaze meeting hers. His face is blank, but not empty. The Doctor steps forward, straightens his lapels, and he watches her button his overcoat back up. That’s clearly too much, because he’s shaking.

“Thank you,” she says. For it all, she doesn’t say.

“It’s nothing,” he replies curtly, on the defensive again. And then, apropos of the Nothing, lunges forward, pushes her back into the console. “I hate you.”

It catches her unprepared; she trips over one of her feet, punches a whole row of navigation buttons as she tries to steady herself. All her desktop settings’ll be wrong, now. Blast.

And the Doctor, undignified as she is, laughs. It makes him furious, although she didn’t really mean to, and he yells, a single wordless shout, convulsing terribly.

He’s childishly upset about it all of course, that he’s caught out as fatally, mortally flawed, despite the prismatic view he’s built for himself. World shattering, really, and she doesn’t envy him. She can see the visceral fear in his eyes.

“I’ll never forgive you,” he spits, feral, gritting his teeth.

“I know,” she says.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first fanfiction ive written since i last logged into fanfiction dot literal net (!) back in the Dark Ages. listened to a benee song ('tough guy', since you asked) and got the absolute writing bug. thanks for your time & have a cool day for me


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